Diagnosing the Cure for Nigeria’s Illness: Open Governance

Imagine Nigeria was a hospital patient. The doctor’s analysis might read something like the following: Patient’s Name: Nigeria Diagnosis: Long-term and possibly fatal corruption. Cause: Long-term lack of accountability across government, business, civil society and the media; with complicit international business and financial institutions. Contributory factor: Lack of citizen engagement among 180+ million citizens. Medication: Strict regime of open governance with continual doses of transparency, citizen empowerment, anti-corruption measures and freedom of information. Nigeria has begun to take its medicine. After series of consultations and meetings between Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and civil society groups, Nigeria created it’s 1st [...]

2018-08-17T00:00:00+00:0017th August 2018|

What Accountability Really Means

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=zHa4fh9sOmg Trust in government is critical to building and maintaining a healthy society. The symptoms of a government that lacks trust are easy to spot: widespread corruption, nepotism, and patronage. In short, a profound lack of accountability. As Blair Glencorse of Accountability Lab notes in the video above, “accountability is about answerability. It’s about people who are in positions of power being accountable for the decisions and actions they take,” especially to the citizens and people who are most affected by these actions. Changing the way governments work and how people engage with them is no easy task. Accountability advocates like [...]

2018-08-13T00:00:00+00:0013th August 2018|

Portrait of a GroundBreaker: Blair Glencorse

GroundBreakers is thrilled to feature Blair Glencorse, the Founder of the Accountability Lab, on this week’s Portraits of a GroundBreaker Series. Blair Glencorse is the Founder of the Accountability Lab, an organization building a new generation of active citizens through innovative anti-corruption initiatives. Blair is passionate about contextualized, people-centered ideas that empower change-makers to drive positive social and economic reform in their communities. The Accountability Lab has developed creative campaigns to encourage accountable behavior, supports “Accountrapreneurs” to drive open governance in their societies, and builds ecosystems around accountability and open government. On this week’s feature of GroundBreakers’ Portraits of a GroundBreaker Series, our discussion with [...]

2018-07-25T00:00:00+00:0025th July 2018|

Remaining Accountable

By Ashmita Sharma, Stephanie Bandyk, and Soni Khanal, Accountability Lab Nepal In 2015, historic twin earthquakes struck Nepal and affected 14 districts with more than 8,790 casualties and 22,300 injuries. The Accountability Lab responded to an apparent gap between government bodies, civil society, and citizens by facilitating feedback loops that cycled information among community stakeholders through its mobile Citizen Helpdesks Platform. The model of mobile Citizen Helpdesks provides a framework to listen, collect, and interpret the concerns of communities, question, and validate these concerns with relevant stakeholders, and then disseminate the information back to the community. Over time, our community agents known as Community Frontline Associates [...]

2018-07-16T00:00:00+00:0016th July 2018|

Managing OGP Through the Political Transition in Liberia

By Anthony K. Selmah, COO, Accountability Lab Liberia The implementation of Action Plans during political transitions in Africa has often been hampered by a lack of understanding of the objectives of open governance and the benefits of improving systems, procedures, and processes that work for the good of citizens. Liberia, for example, became part of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in 2012. This became possible because Africa's first female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, committed her government to upholding all international treaties promoting good and open governance. In the first five years of membership, a number of steps were taken, including building [...]

2018-07-12T00:00:00+00:0012th July 2018|

Speaking Truth to Power in Punjab Province

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Yet there isn’t much sunlight being thrown on local government in Pakistan. The major media outlets focus their coverage on national politics or the big cities. As a result, people in rural areas lack a crucial lever to hold their local officials to account.  Enter the news site tumbhibolo, which launched an Urdu service in the fall of 2016 with the support of the Accountability Lab. The site recruits young people to cover local issues in three districts of Punjab province that are largely ignored by the national media. The goal: to equip citizens to speak [...]

2018-06-25T00:00:00+00:0025th June 2018|

How we’re working to advance gender equity at the Accountability Lab

A little over a year ago,  as we were developing our latest strategic plan, our team identified a  significant gap in our strategy and operations vis-a-vis gender equity and justice. Gender equity is not a new concept within the field of accountability, transparency and governance. There have been a number of studies (here and here for example) that look at the way policymakers and NGOs think about the impact of corruption on women and the role of women in promoting ethical leadership and transparent government. At the Accountability Lab, we noticed a gap in both our operations as well as [...]

2018-05-17T00:00:00+00:0017th May 2018|
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